Father Rasle looked surprised. “Why, you do not imagine that any person would molest me?”
“I do not imagine, but I am sure that the Know-Nothings would do anything,” was the reply. “It is not safe to give them an opportunity for mischief.”
Still the priest looked incredulous.
“I cannot see why they should touch me,” he said. “I have done nothing to provoke them. They insult us, they tell lies, and I do not resent it. Do you know the stories that have been brought to me this week? I find them amusing.” He laughed pleasantly. “See how they represent the church! A Catholic man, they say, wanted to steal a hundred dollars. Now, to take so much at once would be a mortal sin; but to steal ten cents would be only a venial sin. So my brave Catholic steals ten cents, and, after a week, ten cents more, and so on, till he has the hundred dollars. By this means, he secures his money, and is guilty only of a thousand venial sins, which he gets forgiveness for by giving the priest fifty dollars. That is one of Mr. John Conway’s stories. Here is another that was published in the Herald, with my name and the others in full. You know that Mrs. Mary O’Conner’s husband lately died in California. Well, the Herald says that the poor widow came to me, weeping and lamenting that she had not even the consolation of seeing her husband’s grave; and I told her that, for thirty dollars, I would have him buried here. She had saved thirty dollars, earned by washing, and she brought it to me. Three days after, I told her that her husband’s body had been miraculously
brought, and I pointed out the spot where it was buried, down here behind the church. But I warned her that she must not dig there, as it would be a sacrilege, and that, if she did, the body would disappear. Here’s another: Patrick Mulligan confesses some sin to me, and, for a penance, I tell him to give himself twenty-five blows with the discipline. Patrick goes home, gets ready for his penance, and suddenly remembers that he has no discipline. It is late at night. He puts his head out the window, and sees that Mrs. Mahony, next door, has forgotten to take in her clothes-line, and a fine new clothes-line it is. Pat blesses the saints, creeps down-stairs, steals the clothes-line, and, going back, cuts it up into a beautiful discipline. After he has piously beaten himself, he burns the cord all up, that he may not be known as a thief, goes to bed with a clear conscience, and sleeps the sleep of the just.
“Now, sir,” the priest concluded, “it is not likely that I am to be attacked for such stories as that. Of course, no sensible person believes them; or, if people should doubt, they can easily find out the truth.”
“The truth, my dear sir, is precisely what they do not wish to find out,” Mr. Yorke replied. “They want to be exasperated, and, since you will not afford them a pretext, they will welcome any lie, and no questions asked. Moreover, you are not to think that such slanders originate with the low only, and influence only the low. I came upon a book the other day written by Catherine Beecher. You have heard of the Beechers, of course? The title was Truth Stranger than Fiction: a Narrative, she calls it, of Recent Transactions involving Inquiries in regard to the principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice which obtain in a distinguished
American University. That university is in Connecticut; and the affair was one which created a good deal of stir among the Protestant clergy a few years ago. Miss Beecher seems to prove clearly in her book that certain eminent doctors of divinity, and professors, with ladies of their families, ruined the reputation of a distinguished and innocent woman. But what does Miss Beecher herself do, in the preface to this very book wherein she appears as the champion of ‘honor, truth, and justice,’ spelt with capital letters? She goes out of her way to speak of the Catholic clergy, and asserts that, since their ministrations are efficacious, no matter what their characters may be, ‘there is no special necessity, on this account, to limit admissions to this office to those only who are virtuous and devout.’ Now, the sentence is artfully worded to evade the charge of slander; but almost all non-Catholics interpret it, as the writer wished they should, to mean that, in ordaining a Catholic priest, it is not considered of any consequence whether he is a man of good character or not. It has been so interpreted by every person whom I have asked to read it. I give you another instance: Doctor Martin took upon himself to send Edith some anti-Catholic books, which I returned to him without letting her see them. I glanced into one, and found it divided into paragraphs, each containing a charge against your church, illustrated by an anecdote. I read one paragraph, headed A Church without a Holy Ghost. Of course, you were charged with not believing in sanctification; and the anecdote was of a man who became a Protestant after having been a Catholic forty years. When his new teachers told him of the Holy Ghost, he exclaimed, ‘Holy Ghost! What
is that? I have been in the Catholic Church forty years, and I never heard of a Holy Ghost.’ Now, sir, this, of course, seems to you idiotic; but a Protestant doctor of divinity keeps such books, and gives them to people to read, and repeats such falsehoods in his sermons. You see what you have to expect.”
“Shall I, then, publish a card denying the truth of these stories?” Father Rasle asked, with an expression of face which showed his distaste for the task.